Courtney Babb

Institutional practices and planning for walking: A focus on built environment audits

Built environment audits, part of the “toolbox” for planning multi-modal urban transport systems, are used to evaluate the walkability of streets. Whereas the methodological features of audits have attracted attention from planning research, little attention has been paid to the institutional contexts where audits are developed and used. Drawing on literature on audit culture in contemporary institutions and on expert interviews with audit developers and professionals in Australia and New Zealand working with walking audits, three questions are addressed: Who uses walkability audits? How are they used? What substantive changes emerge from auditing practice? The knowledge of practice of auditing the built environment for walking is underdeveloped. While planners, engineers and advocates consider built environment audits useful in different ways, of concern is the use of audits to rationalise limited resources already devoted to infrastructure for walking, rather than produce substantive changes to the quality of the built environment for walking.

The End of Automobile Dependence: How Cities are Moving Beyond Car-based Planning

The End of Automobile Dependence: How Cities are Moving Beyond Car-based Planning is the third part of Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy’s trilogy that began in 1989 with Cities and Automobile Dep...

The Rise of Shared Work Spaces: A Disruption to Urban Planning Policy?

ABSTRACT New models of shared work spaces have the potential to disrupt planning for traditional employment spaces. Drawing on a pilot study of Greater Perth and regional Western Australia, relevant planning policies and interviews with a sample of managers and users of shared work spaces are reported. Shared work spaces are emerging in regulatory voids left by outdated policy frameworks, instead relying on the forward thinking of local innovators seeking to revitalise urban centres. The success of innovative repurposing of space brings into question the efficacy and purpose of more prescriptive land use regulations and policies.